tapparadisecovefandomcom-20200215-history
Sud's Naval Combat Strategy
These are my strategies for waging an economically viable war on the various pirates and ne'er do wells that hang out near your islands. Using these strategies could literally save you millions in gold and even opportunities for rubies due to being able to handle greater threats/adapt quicker to LTQs. Your Fleet, and How to Separate It When you receive a new ship, you should look it up in the wiki, and make a decision as to how it would serve best as a resource to you. Some ships are great voyagers, some are great battlers. If you have a ship you want to make into a warship, I separate all ships I receive into the following stations: Ship of the Line (Admiral) Valuable traits: - Sheer unadulterated combat power Good examples of Admiral ships: - Pirate Crusher - The Emerald Queen - The Magellan - Richard's Battleship - The Dreadnought (keep in mind this is also a great captain/ensign, so don't upgrade it unless you're SURE) The ship of the line is your single best equipped, most upgraded, and powerful vessel in your fleet. It is the most important ship, and is intended to be used in almost all of your conflicts. The admiral ship is fated to do one thing: deal a single, massive blow to execute a weakened enemy ship, while never taking a single point of damage in return (this is exceptionally important, as taking repair damage on this ship can often bankrupt you financially, especially in the case with something like the Magellan or Emerald Queen.) Great Frigate (Vice Admiral) Valuable traits: - Excellent combat power - Reasonable repair costs Good examples of Vice Admiral ships: - Richard's Battleship - The Dreadnought The vice admiral ship in your fleet is usually another powerful ship very close to being as powerful as your admiral ship, but also has a reasonable repair price relative to your island's economy that allows it more flexibility to do certain tasks too expensive for the admiral ship to do. As such, it is your go-to ship when you raid enemy towns. It should be equipped as best as possible, being second only to the admiral, and in case of emergencies involving your admiral ship you can use this one as a stand in. Sloop-of-War (Captain) Valuable traits: - Low repair time (4 hours) - Low repair costs Good examples of Captain ships: - Beth's Cruiser - Chris' Sailboat - The Crimson Sun Captain ships are next in rank and are valued mainly because of the fact that they have 4 hour repair times. This means that they should be outfitted with as best equipment as possible, above ensigns, as they will be involved in battles up to 1.5x-3x more often than other ships. Otherwise, these ships operate much like ensign level ships. Schooner (Ensign) Valuable traits: - Low repair time (but anything works) - Low repair costs - As best combat rating as possible - Not better suited towards being a voyaging ship Good examples of Ensign ships: - Parker's Pinnace - Dark Cruiser - Barco Del Muerto Ensign ships are basically cannon fodder ships, outfitted with whatever is available, and intentionally kept at a low upgrade level in order to keep repair costs down. They take full advantage of the fact that, in a conflict, you are always given the first shot, and that multiple ships can swarm attack a larger ship, making them valuable (and cost effective) to bring enemy ships down to the point where your admiral or vice admiral can one shot them. Ensign ships can literally be any ship, regardless of its stats, the only thing important about them is that they not cost a lot to repair - ideal repair costs for an ensign ship should be an amount of gold equal to 1-3 dolphin taps, so you will want to often leave these at low levels, such as level 1-4, and perhaps upgrade them very minorly along the way as your town level grows and provides more money so they can take a second hit from an enemy. This way, you can affordably wage war on pirates or enemy players without stunting the economic growth of your town. Because these ships will spend most of their time repairing, you want to select ships that wouldn't be better employed towards voyages, or have poor voyage cost to reward ratios (in other words, check your ships out before you upgrade them). Merchant Ships (Conscripts) Valuable traits: - Reasonable repair costs - Reasonable combat ratings Good examples of Merchant Ships: - Boudicca Battleship - John's Merchantman - Phillip's Frigate Every once in awhile, you will end up in an emergency situation where you don't have enough ensign ships available to finish off an enemy ship, or to satisfy the requirements of a weekly or LTQ. This is when you might consider utilizing some of your voyaging ships towards doing damage. Your best choices are ships that have reasonable attack stats, combined with reasonable repair costs. These will cost you a little more since voyage ships you typically want to upgrade, but on the bright side they will often have better battle stats than ensign level ships. Battle Strategy While the actual minigame involved with battles isn't particularly strategic, actually separating your navy up and using your resources effectively has a fair amount of economic strategy to it. The whole idea behind this strategy is to use cheap and easily repaired ships to soak up damage and weaken larger ships, such that your capital ship can come along and mop up the results. In doing this, if you have any rubies, it would be well advised you spend them on at least three strong cannons (you can get three +100 damage cannons for 90 rubies), and then acquire as many of the cheapy special ships that the game offers for around 39-59 rubies. Collecting these ships essentially adds power to your fleet, and gives you a place to put all those basic/powerful cannons you amass. Cannons are, of course, best played on your admiral and vice admiral ships, but if you have powerful hulls laying around, don't be afraid to utilize them on your captain or ensign level ships. I also generally put hulls on my voyaging ships, though I have not verified if this is a good deterrent to them being attacked. Pirates: Pirates are pretty straight forward. They will hang around in your wanted list for awhile, or perhaps hang around your town. The ones that hang around your town are usually pretty weak. The admiral ship is very handy here because, with a sufficiently powerful admiral ship, you can one shot most of the pirates hanging around your town. To get an idea of the strength of the enemy ship, look the pirate's name up in the wiki. It takes about 4.25x the attack statistic on your admiral ship against the defense statistic of the pirate ship for you to one shot it. If you are even doubtful of the results of this, use an ensign ship to soften the pirate up first. You do NOT want to take any damage whatsoever on your admiral ship, because it will cost you insane amounts of coins to repair him. Pirates, in general, provide pretty poor returns on your investment, so it's best to leave them alone unless a LTQ is forcing you to go after them, or you know you can just one shot them. In some cases, you may want to leave the weak pirates on the map just in case you do get a LTQ forcing you to kill them. Players: Players can be engaged much in the same way that pirate ships can, except keep in mind not to attack them unless you are confident you have enough ensign ships to soften the player's ship up first. Player ships tend to provide better loot than pirate ships, and even better, provide rings that you can use towards getting better cannons. Early on jade cannons going into spiked cannons can really help out. While I cannot verify this with 100% certainty, I believe there is merit in targeting player ships that are known for being voyaging ships over player ships known for being battleships. So, for example, if you have a choice between a Robert's Galleon and a Richard's Battleship, target the galleon. One exception is the Emerald Queen, which is both a worthy voyager and battler. Raiding: When you defeat a player ship, you will be given an option to engage in a raid with them. There are different choices you can make on this. You can just take the spoils and not engage in a raid (which is often the best idea if you used your admiral to deal the killing blow). Two other raid strategies exist: 1. You can deal the killing blow with your vice admiral and send it in on a raid (the intention here is to intimidate the enemy player into not retaliating, allowing you to simply take their loot essentially for free, since you won't incur any repair bills), or 2. You can engage the enemy ship with a ship of similar power, such that a tug of war ensues, which can net you a good amount of rings. The idea here is to engage with a ship that allows you to defeat the enemy ship without having to call ensign ships into play, but is weak enough to encourage the enemy to retaliating (since your ship gets repaired every time the fight shifts back to you). In raiding, you can actually start repairing your vessel the moment it goes off to raid, however, I have not verified whether or not tug of wars reset your repair, so if you're going to repair early, make sure you're doing it with your vice admiral or a raid #2 scenario where the ship is actually affordable to repair. I have verified, though, that in a vice admiral scenario where that ship goes in undamaged, it will come home undamaged as well if uncontested. Monsters and "God" tier enemies: When you first start doing the Atlantis content, you will find that, literally, the only way to cost effectively go after any of the beasts in the area is to use ensigns in repeated waves. You don't have to worry about the monsters disappearing, as, unlike the wanted list, they'll always be there, and never heal their damage, so you can just swarm them with mosquito bites until your admiral ship is ready to finish them off. This is also the only really reasonable method for taking out guys like Pakal the God-King without bankrupting yourself. In Conclusion: A lot of people didn't know you could go about battles in this manner, so I thought I'd just include it as a bit of a heads up for people who wanted to save a bit on repair costs on expensive ships. Hope you find it useful.